Silver and Gold
by Aradia2
Summary: Willow tells Spike a tale of violence and death. WARNING CHARACTER DEATHS


She was sitting on a metal filing cabinet, amidst all the debris, her hair blowing softly in the warm winter wind. He had been seeking her out for months, ever since he was clear headed enough to think rationally. She was the only one who could tell him, the only one who survived it. He came silently to stand behind her, hesitating for only a moment before taking off his leather bomber jacket and sitting down beside her.  
  
"I felt it. It woke and I felt its teeth, smelled its breath and looked into its eyes. I was so scared. On the flight over I held Giles's hand and just kept praying, please let them be okay. Please let them make it through this. It was the first time I'd prayed in more years then I can count." Willow said quietly. Her voice was a grating, scratchy sound, hoarse from the injury. The doctors told her it would never be the same.  
  
"We all felt it. Every single being on this earth felt it wake; children cried in their beds, grown men shuddered in fear, and I hid in the London sewers believing it all a delusion. I was out of my mind. The soul, it almost killed me, but instead I went fucking insane." Spike didn't know why he was telling her this. He had never spoken more then a dozen sentences to her but she was the only one left.  
  
Willow kicked a broken piece of cement and continued on as if he hadn't spoken.  
  
"When we got to California they wouldn't let us land at the Sunnydale airport instead we flew into LA and some agents from the Watcher's Council drove us to Sunnydale in a gray van.  
  
"I remember Giles asking for a report on the town's status and the slayer. They said we were too late, that everything.everyone, was gone. There were no survivors. Giles refused to believe them. He had to see for himself, but I knew. I could feel it in my gut.  
  
"It took us two hours to get to Sunnydale, in that time one agent explained our directive. As if I didn't know. Close the Hellmouth, save the world, again."  
  
"You did close it, you succeeded." Spike said comfortingly. He hesitantly set his hand over hers and, when she didn't balk, settled it more firmly so that he could offer any support that he was able.  
  
"I almost died doing it. Others did die." Willow turned toward him and pulled her long hair back. Spike couldn't hold in his gasp when she revealed the left side of her, once beautiful, face. It was now pit marked and cratered with ugly red scars that started at her forehead and ran in an almost perfectly straight line, splitting her face into two. Spike vaguely remembered a comic book villain that she could have modeled for.  
  
"Giles was supposed to help me close the Hellmouth while the Council operatives went to stop them. When the van stopped I couldn't see anything, the smoke was too heavy. The operatives began to arm themselves. Giles and I were each carrying crossbows loaded with bolts tipped in a mix of several different types of explosives set to go off at impact.  
  
Giles and I walked blindly through the smoke, tripping over debris that seemed to be scattered everywhere. I remember one point where the smoke cleared slightly and I could see. There was nothing, no buildings, no people, just wreckage, fires. Sunnydale wasn't hurt, it was dead." Willow said, tears streaking slowly down her right cheek, her voice remaining emotionless. Spike said nothing, just sat listening, his hand tightening over hers.  
  
"As quickly and quietly as possible we began to make our way toward the library, or where the library used to be." She continued her story a few minutes later. "About halfway there, almost on Main Street, I heard a giant screeching sound above my head. I couldn't help myself; I stopped and looked up only to see the most beautiful creatures that have ever existed. I hadn't believed they were real, even when Giles said they were attacking Sunnydale. I hadn't believed until I saw one, a dragon. It was made of brilliant greens and purples; its scales were this shiny metal that made the colors even more impressive. Its body was long and slim, with slender wings, so thin that I could see through them. It was the most magnificent creature I had ever seen.  
  
"Then, as I stood in the middle of the street, it caught our scents. Giles and I began to run as fast as we could, no longer worried about the dragons hearing us. I had been told dragons' eyesight is two hundred times sharper then our own, if one saw us they wouldn't lose us. So we ran, making random twists and turns, trying to lose the beast, but in only a few seconds it was on us molten lava and fire coming out of its mouth. I ran faster, thought my heart was beating so fast I thought it was going to explode. Then another burst of heat burned through my clothing and I heard Giles's strangled scream come from behind me, but when I turned around he was already gone.  
  
"I remember screaming and I remember seeing the thing almost on top of me then there's nothing. I woke up lying under a sheet of fencing, the rubber around the wires had melted into my skin, I couldn't feel my right arm, still can't, all the nerves have been destroyed, and my neck felt like it had been cut from my body. I don't know why it left me, why I'm not dead. I don't think I ever will..."  
  
"The others?" Spike interrupted, not that he cared much about them. but there was one he needed to know and he couldn't say her name.  
  
"I'm getting there. It's the hardest part. I have to work up to it." Willow whispered.  
  
"I lay under that fence for hours, waiting to die, wanting to die. I had never hurt so much in my entire life." Willow said, beginning her story again. "Then the council members were running by me. I didn't want to, I think my body's survival instincts took over and I was calling to them. Tears were running down my face. I remember trying to dash them away though I was still trapped. I didn't want to cry. I wanted to wake up in my bed grateful that it was only a dream but it didn't and the tears wouldn't stop.  
  
A few minutes later a man, only a little older then me, tried to lift the fence off. It pulled at my skin, tearing and ripping. I was on fire and I screamed. Finally it was gone, but I couldn't stop screaming. It was all too much, too much death, too much violence, too much destruction. I couldn't take it.  
  
The man who had gotten rid of the fence picked me up and carried me, still screaming, to the Hellmouth. I didn't notice when he sat me down, didn't feel him mending my wounds or hear him talking softly in my ear. I was gone.  
  
He slapped me. I was so shocked when he did that I stopped screaming. I sat there looking blankly at him, not listening to a word he said, and he slapped me again. That time I got so angry. I wanted to kill him, I wanted to kill the dragons and I wanted to kill every fucking person on this pathetic planet and that scared me. I was very close to going WACO on the entire world again. I was on the edge and in the process of tumbling over.  
  
I remember giving myself a pep talk, sounding all the world like Giles. I kept thinking, pull yourself together, don't go crazy, be strong. But I didn't feel strong. I felt weak, stupid and helpless. So I looked to him, my savior, he would know what to do.  
  
"You have to close the Hellmouth." He said. "You have to do it now, before it gets so big that demons start getting out and you aren't powerful enough to stop it."  
  
"I.I don't know how." I said to him. "I don't remember." I didn't understand why he couldn't do it, why he wasn't protecting me. I didn't want to do this. I was sick of saving the world.  
  
"You have to remember!" He screamed in my face. "If not we're all dead! Do you understand that? Do you want to die?" I looked up into his burned and sooty face. I saw his eyes, so sad and afraid.  
  
"Yes." I whispered into those eyes. "Yes."  
  
"Well, I don't so get your ass up and close that Hellmouth!" He said. He pulled me up by my good arm and pushed me toward the opening hole about 200 hundred feet from where I was sitting. The area was free of debris, the high school ruins had been completely burned away leaving nothing but ash.  
  
"Why is it opening?" I whispered softly. "How?" He told me it was the blood; it had seeped into the ground and opened the Hellmouth. It's always blood right Spike?  
  
I let him pull me toward it and when I stood next to it, with the first tendrils of demons forcing itself through, something went through me. Almost against my will I reached into my pocket and pulled out a plastic baggie of salt, for binding. The spell was simple just a salt circle and a few whispered words, but I didn't want to say them. Something inside me was pulling, forcing me to say it. After I got back to London." Willow trailed off. She looked up at the moon and saw that it was beginning to fall under the horizon. Carefully she stood up and limped over to the still closed Hellmouth. She stood silently for several minutes. Then the air began to shimmer and the ground to shake. Willow threw some salt around in a circle and whispered a few words. The ground settled but the air still glowed. Quietly Willow went back to sit next to Spike.  
  
"What was that?" He asked.  
  
"The spell wears off after about eight months. I started the reactivation spell."  
  
"Started?"  
  
"The first part needs to set in before the second part can be activated. Now, where was I?"  
  
"Something about London."  
  
"Oh, yeah. When I got back to London a few days later, the coven told me that because I had borrowed magic from them to close the Hellmouth they were able to use force to make me cast it. Anyway I threw the salt into a circle and muttered the words, like I just did. When it was finished and the Hellmouth was closed the soldier, it wasn't until later that I learned his name, Malachi Conroy, led me back through the ruins that looked so much like a war zone. I asked where the others were and he said he was the only one left. He hurried me along, wanting to get out of Sunnydale but there was something I had to do first. I went to her house, Buffy's. There wasn't anything left but I began to search, hoping against all the odds that they were alive. I tossed broken furniture, scalded plastic and other debris out of my way. I spent hours searching frantically, Malachi helping as much as I would let him.  
  
First I found Dawn, she was hardly burned but her body, her sweet little body, had been broken into so many pieces. Her blue eyes were open wide; her china doll features stared up at me in shock. She hadn't even had time to scream. My sobs were choked back; to stop the waterfall that I feared would never stop. Then I saw, clutched in her hand a piece of cloth, when I pulled it out I recognized it as part of her monkey, the stuffed animal that she still slept with.  
  
After I had finished crying Malachi pulled me up again and we continued looking. A few minutes later he found Buffy. She was burned.right through the middle of her body. Malachi said burning wood had probably fallen over her. It was.she looked.Oh god!" Willow flew off the filing cabinet and a few feet away where she lost all of the breakfast they had served in her hotel room. Spike listened to her cough and gag while he lit a cigarette, his cheeks wet with tears. When she came back over, wiping her mouth on her sleeve he offered her his flask. She drank it fast, gulping as much as she could at once.  
  
"Xander we found at a construction site, his hard hat had melted into his head. He was missing both of his legs." Willow rushed on before dissolving in tears. Once again Spike waited her out and then handed her the flask.  
  
"Anya, we found last, in her apartment, with Hallie. Wanna know what kills two vengeance demons? Wanna know what they look like after they've been killed? I doubt even you could handle it."  
  
"Pet." Spike began but Willow shook her head.  
  
"There were still two dragons left, one found us at Anya's apartment. Malachi hurt it but it kept coming after us. We ran, I tripped and fell, Malachi didn't notice at first. It took him only a couple seconds to realize that I wasn't behind him, long enough for the dragon to land on me, long enough to rip up the entire right side of my body and to crush my throat. Malachi shot an explosive at it and took out its back. It stumbled off of me and turned on him. He grabbed me and threw me over his shoulder fireman style. He ran the rest of the way with me over his shoulder and a dragon at his back. The funny thing was that as soon as we stepped outside of Sunnydale and onto the highway it was gone. I looked up and saw it flying at the edge of city limits, not crossing the border. The coven told me that when I closed the Hellmouth, I bound the dragons to it. They couldn't cross Sunnydale's borders. The last thing I remember seeing, before I passed out, was the dragon staring at me from inside Sunnydale's borders, its beauty shining out to surround the area with light, and the destruction it had caused at its back." Willow stopped and took a breath.  
  
"So only the two of you made it out?"  
  
"He flagged a car down and we hitch-hiked our way to the nearest hospital. I was unconscious the entire time and when we reached the hospital, went into surgery immediately. I was in the hospital for almost a year. My left side is a mess, ugly scars cover all of it stopping as soon as it reaches the middle of my body, I can't move my left arm and I will never be able to talk above a whisper.  
  
Malachi.they said that he had internal bleeding, in his brain. The doctors couldn't stop it. He died while I was in surgery. I never even knew he'd been hurt; he saved my life in exchange for his own.  
  
No one survived. I died that day; my body just hasn't figured it out yet." Willow stood up and walked back over to the Hellmouth. She called out the ending of the spell and in a flash of light it was activated. Then she stood there, silent, her back to the blonde vampire. When she heard him stand, getting ready to leave, she called out.  
  
"Eight months, the spell needs reactivating every eight months. The salt needs to be sea salt, not table salt."  
  
Spike looked at her back as she continued to stare at the Hellmouth. He contemplated her for a second, then turned and walked away, the circle of protection she had cast going with him. His footsteps echoed softly in her head as she tilted it up to look at the sky and the brilliance of green and purple rushing toward her. ~Fin~ 


End file.
